Within the large slanting walls of Cal State Long Beach’s contemporary art museum await over 10 autobiographical tales, both personal and universal, all striking in their own way.
It’s not just the varied mediums used to represent complicated and appreciative feelings of the past and what lessons they may hold, but the kaleidoscope of disparate journeys on display that tie the exhibition “It Moves Forward, Always” seamlessly together.
The Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum will hold this curated collection of photographs, collages, projected film, holographic images, family keepsakes and clay pieces until May 9.
Before venturing into the main gallery room, guests are treated to a series of standalone pieces by various artists scattered through the lobby and hallway. These pieces — large stained-glass sculptures, dazzling tapestries and historical miniature photographs — are similar to “It Moves Forward, Always” in sentiment.
Timo Fahler’s stained-glass panels hung up by daunting iron hooks depict a personal and culturally historical image of being Mexican-American. The imagery is clearly Aztec in origin, but in a style most often seen in Catholic cathedrals with religious symbolism.
The two panels instead opt for Aztec gods and tales of creation, such as in “Talaoc, and Chalchiuhtlicue and the Great Flood,” which shows an Aztec god spitting out all of creation and life. By blending Mexican cultures over the span of centuries, Fahler illustrates a personal mythology that many can relate to with the bright clashing colors that in turn create its own beauty on the wall on which it hangs.
The first series of paintings in “It Moves Forward, Always” may strike certain Cal State Long Beach alums with a sense of familiarity. Rita Letendre’s signature hard-edged abstract geometric paintings have a home on campus as a sort of welcome banner for liberal arts students titled “Sunforce.”
Viewers can see how Letendre was experimenting with different shapes, arrows, lines and hard-edged wedges as well as opposing hues in the 1960s in her section titled “Dark/Light/Movement,” which was donated by her son to the gallery.
Letendre’s attempts to “catch a flash of light” are striking, but felt more like a palate cleanser between the personal mythology behind and the intimate stories ahead.
Sky Hopkina, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation Indigenous tribe, uses a series of inkjet prints from 35mm film, projected images and digital photographs to take viewers through a journey of self-discovery and understanding. The series evokes a sense of nostalgia through its fragmented images; a cup of tea sitting on a window sill, an empty beach, a cloud of smoke, weeds yearning towards the sky.
Many of the images are reused throughout the series, but reworked in a different position and hue each time, prompting the feeling of revisiting places once intimate and now blurred with memory. His goal to “create remembrance without longing or desire,” as written in his online artist statement, is wonderfully achieved as if watching an old memory through someone else’s vision.
On the wall adjacent is a scrapbook unlike any I’ve ever seen. Hanging under a metal awning similar to ones used for corner markets is a plank of wood large enough to act as a doorway into the past of local artist Daniel Ramos. Scattered atop the door and sprinkled with wood chips are baby photos, childhood drawings, urban landscapes, postcards, photobooth strips, and map clippings.
Viewers could stand in front of the doorway, in awe of the seemingly deeply personal fragments of a Mexican-American family and go through each individual piece of history long enough to track the life of Ramos. His “self-portrait” is at once intimate and relatable, portraying candid photos of family members donning iconic ‘90s Chicano styles as well as a loteria card and Catholic religious figures.
The generational examination continues as viewers are confronted with a large wooden table topped with disfigured clay tools from African-American sculptor Ilana Harris-Bapou. Her accompanying video shows the process by which she created the twisted, pierced and mangled hammers and other objects for “Reparation Hardware.”
Harris-Bapou narrates over a video of her in a cabin in the woods, as she comments on the grief that African-Americans have endured in America, being pushed under constant violence and pressure. She exposes the “American dream” as one reliant on using and recklessly consuming the “tools” needed to create stability.
“It Moves Forward, Always” leaves behind the generational scope and takes a turn into themes of nature and individual exploration on the back wall of the gallery.
Tarrah Krajnak’s group of black and white photographs pair an image of Krajnak holding large stones in her hands with an image of her grid-ruled notebook. The pages of the notebook show a detailed drawing of each stone and long paragraphs of how each one affected her.
After holding a rock with a large gap down the middle, she writes, “In the empty space between the two halves, I could see both my mothers at the same time …” She names each rock based on what she discovered about herself in each series such as “Rock of Two Mothers” and “Rock that Drowns Men’s Laughter.”
Krajnak’s series feels private, more intimate than the collections before it. She skates the line of journaling one’s emotions and simply documenting the nature and life around oneself, and shows viewers that these actions are sometimes one and the same. The black and white images invite the audience to creep closer, welcoming people into her personal journal entries.
The bookend of “It Moves Forward, Always” is a series of black and white images, asking viewers to look inward while experiencing Dionne Lee’s photographed progression of burying one’s self into nature or Tom Jones’ documentation of bending trees, what they meant to Indigenous tribes in the midwest and how they were removed over time.
If viewers venture into the side room in the back of the gallery, they are treated to an immersive experience much different than the intimate portrayals surrounding it. Los Angeles artist Ahree Lee has used the small room to comment on a woman’s ever-shifting place in society, using the 1940s as a backdrop.
Lee has created a futuristic looking panel made of pipes, thick woven textiles, copper beading and computer programming of her own invention. Depicted on the panel is a changing set of kitchen appliances through projected shapes, such as an oven, washing machine and refrigerator while a video of a “Jetsons” like family, both futuristic and old-fashioned, plays in the foreground.
The dichotomy of old and new is used to comment on the roles women are allowed to play in American society. Women who laid the groundwork for computer science in the ‘40s were forced back into domestic roles once World War II was over, begging the question, “What would the world look like if women were allowed to create and keep spaces of their own?”
“It Moves Forward, Always” will be on display at the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum at Cal State Long Beach through May 9. The museum is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from noon to 5 p.m. and on Thursdays from noon to 8 p.m. at 1250 N Bellflower Blvd.
Related Reading:
